I write about the Internet technologies and upstarts that are disrupting advertising and media faster than ever. I'm living this disruption, so I might as well write about it, too. I spent nine years as chief of BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau writing about the leading edge of technology and business, and I continue to do so for a variety of publications. Follow my posts here by clicking the "+ Follow" link under my name. You can also find me at my personal Web site RobHof.com, follow me on Twitter (robhof), Circle me on Google+, subscribe to me on Facebook, and email me (robert.hof@gmail.com).

Why Google's New Tablet Could Be The iPad's First Real Competition

Google is just a couple of days away from debuting a new tablet that could finally shake up a market utterly dominated so far by Apple’s iPad.

Reports from Gizmodo and others say Google is likely to introduce the diminutive 7-inch tablet at its Google I/O developers conference (whose Wednesday keynote I will be covering live here). The kicker, according to the reports: The tablet, built by Asus, will start at $199 for an 8 GB of memory, up to $249 for a 16 GB version. Update: Bloomberg confirmed the co-branded tablet.

Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire already plowed this pricing ground, of course, so such a tablet wouldn’t be entirely new. But while the Fire has been reasonably successful for Amazon, it hasn’t made much of an apparent dent in the iPad because of its limitations, including a somewhat app platform controlled by Amazon itself. And the Fire doesn’t run a standard version of Android, making it tougher yet for developers to do apps for it.

Let’s not forget Microsoft‘s coming Surface tablet, either. But the reported pricing on that device, introduced last week, sounds quite close to the iPad’s. So unless it’s significantly better, which seems doubtful, it seems unlikely to mount a serious challenge.

But Google’s tablet, assuming as Chairman Eric Schmidt has promised (and this is a very big assumption) that it performs well, could for the first time challenge the iPad. And it would come at a time when tablets are the focus of everyone in tech from chipmakers and hardware manufacturers to app developers to marketers and publishers hoping to capitalize on a new mobile Internet device that could give them the creative canvas to rival (or exceed) the appeal of television and magazines. Here’s why Google might have a hit this time:

* It’s cheap. Now, merely being cheap won’t guarantee people will buy it in sufficient numbers to matter. But at $199, it doesn’t have to be every bit as good as the iPad. As Clayton Christensen has noted in cases dating all the way back to the transistor radio in the 1950s, a rival can most successfully challenge an established incumbent not by matching it feature-by-feature, but by offering something good enough for most people for a lot less money.

* The rock-bottom price will attract more app developers. If it’s decent enough to sell a lot thanks to the low price, that suddenly makes Android a more attractive platform for app developers. One of several reasons the iPad is the most popular app platform is that Apple controls the operating system version so developers don’t need to rewrite an app for each device running different versions.

Android is so fractured that it has been too much hassle for many developers to bother creating several versions of their app to run on devices running various Android versions. But all it takes is a hit product using the latest version of Android that sells in the millions–admittedly, not an easy goal to meet–to create that single standard that would help make Android apps a must for developers.

Of course, there are many reasons why this tablet, assuming it does indeed materialize (and today, that’s not a sure thing), could fall flat. Google’s record on its own hardware is poor, between the ill-fated Nexus smartphone to the Chromebook cloud notebook. And it has to overcome a considerable backlog of skepticism by developers about Android. Indeed, AllThingsD’s Ina Fried makes a good point that unless Google can persuade developers to create more tablet-native apps, it won’t matter how good the hardware is.

What’s more, Apple no doubt has some pricing tricks up its sleeve, so it could come out with a cheaper tablet. Given Apple’s brand, unmatched design expertise, and quality control, it needn’t match Google’s price–just get a little closer–to keep a not-as-good $200 tablet at bay.

Not least, depending on which features it sports, Google could end up mostly battling the Kindle Fire, leaving Apple’s iPad to remain popular even at a much higher price.

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Folks, you seem to be missing the big picture. The trend SHOULD be convergence between cell phones and tablets. Smart Phones are already tablets with smaller screens. I’d pay more in order to have a smart phone that slides into the back of a tablet chassis … for when I need to do some serious reading!

Hmm, not so sure about convergence. I think smartphones and tablets, while overlapping somewhat, have very different use cases that will not merge–smartphones for quick communications of all kinds with a little reading/viewing/gaming, tablets for consuming media with a little video communications and email.

Robert, If there isn’t convergence, then why do I end up having the same apps on both devices? The only difference that I see is the difference in screen size … which I do need for reading!

The big headache is that I end up with local files scattered among the devices depending on there they were created. With a converged device, all of this goes away. I keep my smart phone in my pocket for calls and quick issues & then insert it into the tablet body that I keep in my bag when I need the larger screen!

You make a good point. I think the main reason the vast majority of tablets are WiFi versions speaks to the problem with multiple (costly) data plans. And yes, there is a lot of overlap in apps. Perhaps my vision is just too far gone, but I find reading stories of any length is just too painful on a smartphone. As for files, well, I think much file creation and storage is heading quickly for the cloud. Unless they’re videos, they don’t take much bandwidth.

All that said, if someone can come up with a sort of combo/detachable device, I’m all ears. But I’m doubtful, for the same reason those pants with legs that zip off to become shorts don’t work very well as either pants or shorts.

I don’t know if it will be this Google tablet or the Microsoft one, or what; but I definitely think we’re seeing Apple in the midst of them reaching a plateu. Look what happened with the iPhone 4. When it came out, no one had yet made a phone that was close to as good as the iPhone 3- Apple was a full generation ahead. But the 4s didn’t do much that the 4 didn’t- Apple was in the lead, and only took a baby step while their competition was sprinting to catch up.

By today, it is clear that Apple has lost the lead in smartphones. They don’t offer a 4g LTE phone yet, and when they do, it will only be playing catch-up to Samsung and other manufacturers.

With tablets, Apple still has the lead. When they introduced the iPad 2, no one had matched the first iPad yet. But the “new iPad” is a lot like the iPhone 4s- there wasn’t a ton of improvement.

What I think will thus happen is that Apple’s failure to take a big leap with that update will open the door to someon catching and passing them in tablets, and that by the time they come out with an iPad 4, they will be playing catch-up, rather than continuing to lead.

For my money, this is proof of the creative brilliance of Steve Jobs. As soon as he was gone, Apple began to plateu and was no longer able to keep the lead they once had.

The Ipad is becoming the wave of the future in speech therapy and soon to be intergrated with occupational and phyical therapy with its many apps that can assist with treatment. There are apps now such as “say-Hi” and “translator” that will translate english phrases in any language both in text and voice for as little as 2 or 3 dollars. There’s a “Pinterest” app that you can download any picture for powerpoint presentations. The Ipad apps for children range from games, making a birthday cake from scratch, to learning how to read with hooked on phonics, to purchasing textbooks on the ipad to avoid lifting heavy weight books. The one thing as little as it may seem which seems to just be me when I bring it up is why people spend hundreds on a tablet when it doesnt have a USB flash drive? Hello. I tried to print something from my Iphone that is supposed to search for wireless printers and I was directly in front of a brand new wireless printer and it said no devices were found. I was told I had to enter the information of the printer into the phone for it to work. I was told that about the ipad tablets as well and most people send it to their email and print it from their home computer. The new nexus 7 may be a hot pick not just for its size and price but bec it has a flash drive.